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2010 House Open Seat Watch (6/19/09)

Fri Jun 19, 2009 at 7:56 AM EDT

It's been a while since we posted our last 2010 House Open Seat Watch, so our crack research team down at SSP Labs took extra time in compiling this latest entry of the Watch. Special acknowledgment must be given to SSP Forensic Open Seat Analyst DavidNYC for making sure that no stone was left unturned.

So once again, we've compiled a list of confirmed and potential retirements/vacancies in the House, as well as a list of seats that we've removed from our watch list (which is available below the fold). Once again, please note that "age" in our charts reflects the incumbent's age on election day, 2010. Blue boxes indicate a new entry (or an incumbent who has been shuffled between categories). All tables are now sortable - just click on any column header to sort.

Only one new open seat for our list this time, and open seat fans can thank a Democratic operative named Barack Obama for making it happen through the appointment of upstate New York Rep. John McHugh to be the nation's newest Secretary of the Army. We can probably expect to see more retirements later this summer; the Congressional recess in August is a particularly popular time for sitting House members to take stock of their lives and make decisions on the future of their DC careers. So who might be clearing out? Perhaps some of these representatives will be the next ones to hang up their spurs:

I think the Democratic field has pretty much solidified with Robin Carnahan; I doubt Lacy Clay wants to mess that up and almost certainly lose a primary. Plus that dairy you linked was posted in February.

That's a "feature," not a bug, in the sense that the javascript which handles the sorting is limited in what it can do. I don't know how to program in javascript, but if you do, by all means take a crack at improving the underlying script.